An Actor Repairs: Listening not Generating

The wonderful thing about being in Mr. Burns, was that I was able to see my growth in a wide variety of performance aspects from the naturalistic contemporary dialogue or the first two acts, to the shamelessly entertaining clothes-shedding dance numbers in act two, to the comedia-esque physical characterization of the final act. In my final year I am starting to settle into characters more and not push. I feel I am acting to get something from the other performers onstage rather than act what I think the character feels or looks like in that moment. Both with Coleen in Burns and Anna in Golden Boy I feel, in my third year, I have truly found spontaneity and real "liveness" on stage by making it about others rather than the self. In playing Mr. Burns, I also found spontaneity in my relationship to the audience, which I learned from clowning. I also applied techniques from our mask pieces to specify the physicality of Burns and to use my head movements in order to communicate thought changes rather than my face. Vocally, Burns strange voice and long pieces of text required sharp diction and classical text techniques such as sustaining and operative words to get the rather strange ideas to the audience. Most importantly my training has given me the confidence to really find new exciting moments every time I go onstage because I respond to reality of the present, rather than my own ideas of what the moment should or should not be